2012 Nitro Knockout Fights Through Kansas Weather!
Written by: Ken Peterson on behalf of Emery Park R/C Club - Wichita, KS
Despite Kansas thunderstorms, rain and track flooding, Emery Park R/C Club would not be Knocked out by mother nature! It took significant effort, persistence and teamwork, but in the end Emery Park R/C Club pulled off another successful Nitro Knockout.
First off, a big thank you to the 2012 Nitro Knockout sponsors who supported our 2nd annual event in Wichita, KS. Hobbytown USA of Wichita has supported the Club from inception and this year co-sponsored the plaques along with Stearman Electric who has also stepped up sponsorship in 2012. Another ongoing supporter of Emery Park R/C Club is JConcepts who provided raffle winners like Teagan Hamilton a gift certificate.
Castle Creations jumped in new this year and made Seth Bishop’s weekend by providing a special discount card.
Emery Park R/C Club would also like to thank HP Hobbies in Hutchinson, Kansas who contributed some gift certificates to the winners.
While the rain couldn’t Knockout this event, it did affect overall entries. With a forecast of rain looming during the week, Emery Park R/C Club ended up with 56 entries, about half what it expected. Still there were racers from across Kansas and even some who made the 5 hour trip from Omaha, Nebraska and the new layout was awesome with racing very close throughout the event.
After widespread thunderstorms, race directors showed up early Friday morning to find 3 small lakes covering the track. Quickly Club members and racers came together, strapped on their mud boots and used 3 water pumps to drain the water out of the low lying areas and spread wood chips in the wet areas to accelerate drying. By early afternoon drivers were on the track practicing on the track’s new and improved layout. During the track rebuild, the Club was able to locate a construction company on a nearby jobsite who had endless truck loads of clay to dispose of, which gave the track a third dimension with tons of elevation and off camber features across the high bite surface. New and current racers agreed, this was the best layout ever at Emery Park R/C. Another new addition were portable light towers that the Club rented so practice and qualifying could run into the evenings, which gave racers another new experience in Wichita. Here is a panoramic of the layout Friday morning right after the Club had finished removing all the water from heavy rains and prepped the surface.
Saturday morning welcomed Nitro Knockout racers with more rain, however it was much less than the night before and track crews had the surface ready for qualifying by lunchtime. With fewer racers than expected, everyone voted to run the entire program in one day, this was made possible by the portable lights that lit up the track at night when the main events got underway. Emery Park R/C Club held 3 rounds of IFMAR qualifying and used Qualpoints to seat racers in the mains.
One of the biggest questions to be answered was whether last year’s expert buggy winner, Jason Howell of Hutchinson, Kansas could defend his title, and the answer was absolutely! Despite Jason worrying about the so called “TQ curse”, he got out early in the expert buggy A-main and after a few brief challenges from Chris Pearce, Frank Sell and Andy Groening he ended up putting 2 laps on everyone with his Agama buggy. Pit strategy in this race also played a role as the top 4 buggies were all on 10 minute pits for this 30 minute main event. Based on Jason’s repeat win, he has now been dubbed, Mr. Nitro Knockout! Here is a shot of Jason with his buggy.
One of the fastest growing classes at Emery Park R/C is electric buggy, and in this main event the race was for 2nd place as long time Wichita, Kansas racer Chris “Cool” Puller was in a world of his own. Chris got out early in the first two of the triple A-mains and never looked in his mirrors taking 2 strong victories. Chris’ prowess on the new layout was not a surprise as he was the brainchild behind the track design and he spent endless hours in the weeks leading up the event sweating at the controls of the bobcat moving dirt and crafting the jumps. Then it came down to his closest competitor, Nicholas Pavel who made the long trip with his Dad Jeff and two brothers from Omaha, Nebraska. Nicholas fended off Andy Groening from Burton, Kansas and Kevin “Hacker” Stevens from Hutchinson, Kansas to take second place overall. Here is a shot of 1st place winner and track designer Chris with his hardware.
Short Course was a last minute add to the racing program, but in the end it was a good decision as Short Course racers fielded a full class. After the dust settled, Frank Sell took top honors with TQ and a 1st place, however Nicholas Pavel was not too far behind in 2nd. Based on how good the Short Course trucks looked on the new layout, there was a lot of talk about fielding this class on a weekly basis. Here is Frank Sell.
While electric truggies are not as popular at most tracks, there is a handful of regular electric truggy racers in Wichita. In this one Adam Thompson edged out one of the Club’s board of directors and sponsor, Matt Stearman of Stearman Electric. And not too far behind was Seth Bishop who is quickly becoming a skilled R/C racer in the Wichita racing scene. On a side note, it was great to see Adam Thompson have such a good showing at the Nitro Knockout as just a few weeks ago he underwent a life saving surgery. Adam does not have insurance and was left with several thousand dollars in medical bills. During the weekend racers donated to a fund to help Adam cover some of his medical expenses. Here is a shot of Adam Thompson with his winning truggy.
Another hotly contested main event was expert truggy. In this one, two Hutchinson, Kansas racers Frank Sell and Chris Pearce got out from the pack early with a slew of fast 29 second laps and continued racing close all the way to the end, but after 20 minutes of high flying truggy action, Frank edged out Chris by only 3 seconds. Here is Frank with his Knockout hardware.
Rounding out the racing was sportsman buggy and truggy. In these two A-mains Everett Shiever took a clean sweep. Everett’s win in buggy was most impressive where he put 3 laps on the field by putting down some really consistent 33 second lap times in the main event. On a side note, he's also a great mechanic. During the track rebuild the bobcat broke down, we gave him some wrenches, screw drivers and track spikes and within about 15 minutes we were moving dirt again!
Again thanks to all of Emery Park R/C Club sponsors and congratulations to everyone for helping to make the 2012 Nitro Knockout a success!
Here is a link to full main event results:
http://emeryparkrc.yolasite.com/resources/2012%20Nitro%20Knockout%206-16.txt
Also here is a link to more pictures from the raffle and trophy presentation:
www.photobucket.com/2012nitroknockout
And finally, here is a youtube video of most of the expert buggy main event taken from my helmet camera. Enjoy and we will see at Emery Park R/C soon!
